Interim Statute Okays SPAM, PM Dictatorship

Interim Statute Okays SPAM, PM
Dictatorship

By M.R. Josse

Months after
passing its original deadline, the SPAM interim constitution
has finally seen light of day – paradoxically on Poush Ek
(first of Poush, or 16 December) 2006, a date that its
constituents consider a 'black day' in this country's
political history!

To be precise, however, the 168-article
document, still to be formally promulgated, was, like a
number of other "historic" SPAM templates, birthed at the
Prime Minister's official residence in Baluwatar at the
witching hour sometime past mid-night. The formal birth
certificate, with eight signatures, however was issued only
at breakfast time.

Whether such a birth will turn out to
be auspicious or otherwise will, of course, be borne out by
time, and the ebb and flow of future events.

However, to
engage in a spot of political clairvoyance I would venture
to speculate that those developments will, by and large, not
be to the liking of the SPA. What they have done in haste,
in myopic animus against the Monarchy and prompted by
external lobbies, they will, I maintain, come to repent at
leisure as the Maoists rudely sweep them aside and take over
full control of this country, possibly sometime following
the CA elections, whenever they are held.

After all, cold
logic suggests that no party in Nepal can even pretend to
compete with the Maoists using the 'republican' platform:
yet that is precisely the mission impossible that the SPA,
including the two NC groupings, have clearly and naively
attempted.

BLOOD-RED DAWN

Whether by coincidence
or design, the state-owned dailies, the Gorkhapatra and the
Rising Nepal, in their unbounded excitement at the inking of
the draft interim constitution burst forth on their front
pages on 16 December with large-sized photographs of a
blood-red dawn with captions suggesting that it symbolised
the inauguration of a "new Nepal."

One doesn't know if
those newspapers have already been taken over in some Nepali
version of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR).
However, from those news photographs the message to ordinary
folk seemed clear and chilling enough: the future of "new
Nepal" is crimson-hued. To recall, during China's
decade-long GPCR the national hymn was Mao's poem, 'the East
is Red.'

Incidentally, the continuous mantra about "new
Nepal" and "restructuring" of existing state institutions
are – particularly against the backdrop of the "historic"
interim constitution – also redolent of the GPCR's
ferocious campaign against the 'Four Olds': old bourgeois
habits and customs, old bourgeois culture, and old ways of
thought.

REPRESENTATIVE OF ALL?

Since the
culmination of the mass movement of April there has been the
constant din about the "people's mandate" with the neat if
erroneous assumption that all that has been done in
statecraft by the SPAM combine since then has been clearly
authorised by the "people."

Of course, the truth is that
the "people" have done nothing of that sort by themselves!
Indeed, the UML's solitary effort to provide the "people"
the opportunity to directly voice their opinion on the
institution of the Monarchy in a referendum was shot down
primarily by the two heavier SPAM guns: to wit, the NC and
the Maoists.

There is then also the carefully cultivated
myth, flogged endlessly by the mainstream media egged on by
extraneous impulses, that the SPAM combo represents the
entire mass of the Nepali people. But, do those who sit in
parliament today and those who hope to do so in the future,
according to plans they themselves have designed, represent
the entire mass of the 25-26 million Nepali people?

Or,
even if one were to estimate that the electorate today
stands somewhere around 18 million, on what basis can it be
claimed that the eight parties who have written the interim
constitution have the right to "represent" all those who are
outside their fold? To take but one example there is the RPP
which had secured 13 percent of the votes in the last
general election but which was excluded from having any say
in its drafting.

Not only are there umpteen political
parties that have been formally registered and have
participated in past elections that have been left out in
the political cold, but so also have millions of Nepali
citizens who do not belong to any political party. Should
they not be represented in any exercise to draft a
constitution, even an interim one? Should they not be
included in a loudly claimed effort to promote an
"inclusive" democracy?

Without making too fine a point, it
must be said that the document that was born on the Poush Ek
just past is exclusionist and seeks, in its present form, to
first consolidate, or even prolong, the dictatorship of the
eight parties that drafted it.

At this point it may be
germane to recall Emanuel Kant's sage observation that "no
treaty of peace shall be held valid in which there is
tacitly reserved matter for a future war."

In our present
context, the German philosopher's pithy insight contained in
his treatise 'perpetual peace' can be interpreted as
suggesting that all political elements that have willfully
been excluded in the endeavour to write a new Basic Law of
the land will, ipso facto, be provided with the strongest
possible incentive to revolt against it in the future when
they perhaps perceive that they have enough strength to do
so.

Are the seeds of a future Jana Andolan-III thus
embedded therein? Are we as a nation destined not to savour
perpetual peace but to experience the maelstrom of perpetual
revolution or turmoil?

DICTATORSHIP OF PM

The
miasma of dictatorship from the interim constitution also
comes wafting from another direction. In fact, it originates
in the dictatorial concentration of power envisioned in the
hands of the prime minister. Apart from all else, that is a
gauche outcome of a revolt that was supposedly directed at
ending autocratic regression and promoting a "total"
democracy.

What other conclusion is possible? Thus, not
only is there no provision for impeachment, dismissal or
recall. The PM has, instead, been accorded unlimited power
and influence over the entire political establishment. The
chief executive becomes the head of state, with the King's
power suspended, nominating the chief justice of the Supreme
Court and exercising huge amounts of legislative authority
in addition.

Against this unusual, unprecedented backdrop
it is hardly surprising that a number of Supreme Court
justices are believed to be considering resigning from their
respective positions. Some have reportedly expressed their
dissatisfaction over the requirement for them to take oaths
of office (again) as well as on account of the envisaged
composition of the Judicial Council (JC).

Clearly, the
idea is to promote a pliant judiciary, anathema in a
democracy as we generally know it. No wonder, then, that one
senior justice was quoted in a daily as stating plainly:
"the politicians want a committed judiciary." Yet, as
Justice Balaram KC put it: "the fundamental rights of the
people, the rule of law and the independence of the
judiciary must remain intact."

A "committed judiciary"
clearly and naturally belongs in the world of a single-party
polity based on the dictatorship of the proletariat. For, as
a senior justice rightly pointed out: what has been cooked
up by SPAM is "sheer violence of the independence of the
judiciary."

Incidentally, even pro-NC advocates such as
Radheshyam Adhikari have publicly indicated their
dissatisfaction at incorporating concepts in the interim
constitution that militate against the sacrosanct principle
of separation of powers and a clear-cut system of checks and
balances on which democratic governance rests.

Coming back
to Kant, the rule of law refers essentially to the existence
of an independent, unbiased judiciary that can interpret the
laws of the state as also the presence of transparent,
uniformly applied rules and statutes.

A POSSIBLE
EXPLANATION

How is it that the "democratic" framers of
the document saw fit to entrust the prime minister with such
draconian or dictatorial authority - power that in a normal
democracy no chief executive enjoys even during emergency
rule?

Though it would be foolish to expect anyone to come
up with an authoritative explanation for such a political or
constitutional travesty, it is nevertheless worthwhile to
mull over it.

My own hunch – and at this stage it is no
more than just that – is that it is premised on two
considerations: (1) that the present incumbent will, alas,
not be in this world for long and (2) that, against that
backdrop, it presented all major wannabes for the
premiership with the tempting prospect of attaining such a
powerful position in the event that the incumbent passes
away before long, given his frail state of health and
advanced age. So, why object?

In the latter grouping would
hypothetically be figures such as Sushil Koirala, Ram
Chandra Poudel, Sher Bahadur Deuba and Madhav Kumar Nepal
– all major participants in the drafting exercise on
behalf of the SPA.

The sting or nub however lies
elsewhere. While perhaps going along or even piloting the
move to accord such unheard of power to the prime minister
in the interim period, the Maoists are no doubt cleverly
biding their time.

Thus, if it so happens that the
incumbent succumbs to his illness before the CA elections is
over and done with the Maoists would surely stake their
claim to the office. Given their demonstrated ability to get
what they want from the SPA who has any doubt that, in such
circumstances, Prachanda will not claim and secure that
powerful position?

Given the prime minister's
predilections and proclivities, no one can have expected
him, of all people, to have objected to assumption of such
awesome political power.

To come back to the prospect of a
Maoist leader stepping into the present incumbent's shoes,
what would then follow is anyone's guess. Yet, it hardly
requires the political savvy of a Mao Zedong, a Fidel Castro
or a Ho Chi Minh to surmise that such legitimatimized
political power would be used with ruthless efficiency to
ensure that the Maoists get exactly what they want from the
CA.

After all, let us not forget George Orwell's much
quoted lines from his defining work, 1984: "Who controls the
past controls the future; who controls the present controls
the past." Extrapolating that to the above hypothetical
prospect, the Maoists would control the present, the past
and the future: the perfect recipe, in other words, for
reshaping this country along classic Maoist lines.

To sum
up, there is little doubt that the interim constitution
represents a clear attempt to consolidate the dictatorship
of SPAM at one level and, at another, that of the prime
minister.

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